This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
Inequality | Inferiority | Man | Men | Modesty |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.
Silius Italicus, fully Tiberius Catius Asconius Silius Italicus
Brave men ought not to be cast down by adversity.
Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL
[Anselm’s Proof God exists] God exists in our understanding… This means that the concept of God resides as an idea in our minds… God is a possible being, and might exist in reality. He is possible because the concept of God does not bear internal contradictions… If something exists exclusively in our understanding and might have existed in reality then it might have been greater… This simply means that something that exists in reality is perfect (or great)… Something that is only a concept in our minds could be greater by actually existing. Suppose (theoretically) that God only exists in our understanding and not in reality. If this were true, then it would be possible for God to be greater then he is… This would mean that God is a being in which a greater is possible. This is absurd because God, a being in which none greater is possible, is a being in which a greater is possible… Herein lies the contradiction… Thus it follows that it is false for God to only exist in our understanding. Hence God exists in reality as well as our understanding.
Adversity | Fortune | God | Good | Spirit | Supplication | God |
If texts are unified by a central logic of argument, then their pictorial illustrations are integral to the ensemble, not pretty little trifles included only for aesthetic or commercial value. Primates are visual animals, and (particularly in science) illustration has a language and set of conventions all its own.
Enough | Fortune | Land | Principles | Size | Understanding |
Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
In Paris, Julien’s position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, a clear statement of their situation. The novels would have outlined for them the part to be played, shown them the model to copy; and this model, sooner or later, albeit without the slightest pleasure, and perhaps with reluctance, vanity would have compelled Julien to follow.
When Bonner writes that natural selection for optimal feeding is then presumed to be the cause of non-motility in all forms, I can't help suspecting that some plants might do even better if they could walk from shade to sun—but the inherited constraints of design never permitted a trial of this intriguing option.
Stoics, The Stoics or Stoicism NULL
The cosmos, they hold, comes into being when its substance (ousia) has first been converted from fire through air into moisture and then the coarser part of the moisture has condensed as earth, while that whose particles are fine has been turned into air, and this process of rarefaction goes on increasingly till it generates fire. Thereupon out of these elements animals and plants and all other natural kinds are formed by their mixture. [Diogenes]
Fortune |
A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. [...] If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research—work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period, not of preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth's surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise.
Chance | Civilization | Equality | Fortune | Industry | Man | Men | Money | Opportunity | People | Rights | Sympathy | Thrift |
As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional men and women always see only the individual whose fate is up at the moment, and neither his victim nor the many millions of unknown individuals who would in the long run be harmed by what they ask. Moreover, almost any criminal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person whom he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him. If the mother is alive she will always come, and she cannot help feeling that the case in which she is so concerned is peculiar, that in this case a pardon should be granted. It was really heartrending to have to see the kinfolk and friends of murderers who were condemned to death, and among the very rare occasions when anything governmental or official caused me to lose sleep were times when I had to listen to some poor mother making a plea for a criminal so wicked, so utterly brutal and depraved, that it would have been a crime on my part to remit his punishment.
Achievement | Business | Duty | Energy | Fortune | Good | Life | Life | Man | Means | Need | Power | Success | Wife | Woman | Business |
We have a given problem to solve. If we undertake the solution, there is, of course, always danger that we may not solve it aright; but to refuse to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot possibly solve it aright.
Enough | Fortune | Lesson | Life | Life | Man | Power | Regard |
A man with a half-volition goes backwards and forwards, and makes no way on the smoothest road; a man with a whole volition advances on the roughest, and will reach his purpose, if there be even a little wisdom in it.
Inequality | Man |
Do but consider what an excellent thing sleep is...that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Who complains of want? of wounds? of cares? of great men's oppressions? of captivity? whilst he sleepeth? Beggars in their beds take as much pleasure kings: can we therefore surfeit on this delicate Ambrosia? Can we drink too much of that whereof to taste too little tumbles us into a churchyard, and to use it but indifferently throws us into Bedlam? No, no, look upon Endymion, the moon's minion, who slept three score and fifteen years, and was not a hair the worse for it.
I have the consolation to reflect that during the period of my administration not a drop of the blood of a single fellow citizen was shed by the sword of war or of the law.
Consolation | Fortune | Nothing | Public |